These Broken Lights
by Let's Call Her The Tarryn
Summary: You can take your love away, but don't you ever leave me alone. Burn the ghosts we've carried home. Come on, touch me, show me you're imperfect, too. These broken lights, they shine on us tonight." -Automatic Loveletter


This is not my usual style of writing. I'm just trying something new. It's strange, and I'm sorry if it's a little difficult to read, or if it's hard to understand. But I absolutely love it.

Based on the song August 28th 3:30 am by Automatic Loveletter.

.I own nothing.

x—x

This is true. This is hurt. This is crazy. This is broken. This is tragic. This is glorious. This is magic.

This is us.

And this is our story.

**The Beginning.**

July 12'th 2:17 p.m.

2005

It didn't start the day we first met. When our parents sat us all down and made us tell each other our names and something about ourselves, the way your kindergarten teacher makes you sit in a circle on an alphabet rug on the ground. It didn't start when we were forced to walk down that isle together, his father smiling at us from the alter, and my mother waiting behind us. Because at those times we were nothing to each other.

Sure, our parents were dating. And then that became, sure our parents are going to get married. I'm getting step-siblings? Gee, that sucks. He was just a face I was preordained to dislike, and I was a girl he couldn't even remember the name of.

No. Obviously, it started when we were placed under the same roof. When we woke up and saw each other. Went to the bathroom and found the other waiting outside, pounding on the door. Went to eat and found the other sitting in the kitchen eating your breakfast. Went to our rooms knowing only a wall was between us, sometimes wishing it was a continent-a _universe_, sometimes wishing it was nothing at all.

Everything we did suddenly became about the other.

The rooms we slept in. The clothing we chose to wear. The things we decided to eat.

The things we chose to say.

The people we talked to. The places we went. The looks we gave. The topics we decided were important. The games we played and the movies we watched.

The people we dated.

Everything, every decision, every movement lingered with a strategic reasoning that revolved around the other, whether it was on purpose or if we didn't even realize it.

My life became about Derek Venturi and his became about me, Casey McDonald.

It was obvious that we both hated it so much that it became sickeningly wonderful to us, until we couldn't do anything but internally agree to

Hate to love

and

love to hate.

I couldn't decide which one I wanted to feel more. They seemed the same shade of horrible, awful, immoral, magnificent grey.

I wonder what colors he saw when he thought of it.

Some days, I swear I could hear another conversation among our heated words. Behind our red-faced screaming, if you could listen close enough, I thought you could hear the whisperings of words that were never spoken.

The day it changed was a day we were both waiting for, but still weren't expecting to come. Even as we moved through the paces, taking action, we didn't see it coming.

I don't know what we had been screaming about. Honestly, I usually forgot quickly. I just would hold onto whatever grudging feeling was coursing through me, so that I would be able to interact with him. But I was tired. And as the glint in his eyes dulled while he yelled at me, I could tell he was tired, too.

"Just stop, Derek!" I screamed. "I'm already down. Why do we have to keep doing this?"

I stared straight into his eyes, only hearing the beating of my heart, and his shallow, ragged breaths, hoping that we could just put our swords away. We were both on the edge of becoming seventeen, and had spent nearly the last two years of our lives climbing a pointless high until we both would fall.

His movement wasn't hesitant, but he didn't lunge. However he did it, his lips ended up pressed forcefully against mine-

The exact moment that the light bulb in the lamp next to us

burst.

It was so symbolic, it hurt.

Of course, the broken glass we ended up rolling around on should have hurt more, but we didn't feel it.

We were tangled together, looking up into the floor. Each touch burned, but we were dying for more. It was our dysfunction growing like anything with potential does. I'd never loved something that I hated so much more in my entire life. It was a complete destruction of who I was.

And we celebrated it.

The problems didn't stop.

We weren't a fairy tale. Not even close. We weren't even sure what we were at all. We fought harder, and more forcefully, aiming to hurt each time. We'd never let our guard down, or show each other weakness.

But that didn't stop us from desperately clinging to each other whenever we could. Each of his touches were frantic. Gentle and rough at the same time. Each one lingering with his emotions. Each caress was like him screaming out. It was like he was trying to make sure I was imperfect like him, and if I wasn't, and he couldn't find those flaws, he would make sure to burn them into my very skin as our hands clung to handfuls of skin.

We didn't talk much. But there was always so much to say. I think that no matter how much we wanted to speak, we were waiting for the other to give in first. Besides, we'd never listen to each other. But we sat in silence anyway.

I'd feel exposed and open. Sick and bitter. Hoping that he'd cave. And he did. In his own way.

Grabbing a hold of my shoulders, slightly shaking me, enough to make me stop screaming at him he looked me dead in the eyes. That glint was there, brighter than ever. His face emotionless.

"You're absolutely awful." He said.

"I love you, too."

Because we both knew that that's what he meant.

We took beauty from one another, pushing it away, yet I'd never felt more beautiful. We screamed, and then we laughed. We watched each other smile, and from then on out, left everything else unsaid.

Lights always seemed to shatter around us. Streetlights, park lights, lights in the house, lights at school. It was something we came to identify with ourselves. Ourselves as together.

Lights shattered at our Senior prom. That was the night I walked away from him. But in a way, he had walked away first.

The glint in his eyes disappeared that night.

A month later he moved to Toronto.

I stayed in London.

We didn't see each other for two years.

The one night, at twenty years old, I opened the door to my apartment to find him standing outside of it.

"What do you need?" I asked, because I knew he needed something.

"Nothing." He replied. His eyes said nothing.

Every fiber of my being screamed not to ask what he wanted.

I asked anyway.

"I want you." He said.

Two years melted away in less than a second.

His eyes glimmered again as soon as his finger tips brushed my arm.

We kissed until we bled. The emotion flowing between us was so intense I thought it would kill us both. Our bodies fought against each other until we were freed from ourselves, granting complete ownership to one another. We danced in our tragedy. Parts of me told me I shouldn't be where I was. But then everything else inside of me wouldn't let me leave.

But that didn't stop him from trying. Lying, tangled together, it was like something inside him turned on.

It was fear.

He got up and began to gather his things at 3:00 am.

I screamed until I couldn't breath. He covered his insecurities with made up ideals of our past. He left the apartment, and I followed him. I followed him all the way out to the street, screaming the whole way through.

"You're a coward!" I yelled.

"I'm not a coward. I fell. I fell through the wall I built up against you the day you left."

"I might have walked away first, but you left before I did."

"We're fucked, Case. And you know it." He turned away from me.

My heart burst open, letting loose the words that I had kept bubbling inside since I was sixteen.

"Fuck you, Derek. You can take your love away. God knows that you've done it. We both have. But don't you ever leave me alone. Not again."

Playing them back in my mind, they make absolutely no sense at all. But in my head, bottled up for as long as they had been, they made complete sense. And as they lingered in the thick air between us, we both understood them, too.

He turned and looked at me. There was no more contempt or passion there then there had ever been. Just the same glint in his eyes and the smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth-the one that taunted me.

Slowly, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his jacket and leisurely strolled back toward me, as if taking a walk on the beach. He stopped in front of me and looked me straight in the eyes.

"You're absolutely awful." He said.

There was so much energy flowing between us that we could have brought back all of the broken lights we had endured.

We created our own light that shined brightly upon us.

And his words had me wrapped up even more so than the first time he had said them.

This is us.

**The End.**

August 28'th 3:30 a.m.

x—x

Told you it was different.

Since I'm trying something new I'd really appreciate reviews. Tell me you loved it. Tell me you hated it. Tell me you have absolutely no idea what the hell you just read. Just tell me something. )

Review, loves.

-Tarryn


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